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PTR 2.3.0: Mini-Map Improvements

I still haven’t been able to copy a character to the PvE Public Test Realm, and my one forlorn copy to the PvP test realm is still pending, but nevertheless I made a cute little level 1 Blood Elf named Ione (a hunter of course!) and went out to see the changes. The first thing I noticed was some new functionality around the mini-map.

First off, NPCs who have quests for you now show up as a yellow “!” on the mini-map. As an example, to the right you can see me hovering my mouse over the “!” and learning that Magistrix Erona wants to talk to me.

In addition, there is now a magnifying glass icon on the rim of the mini-map. Clicking on it brings up this menu of NPC types. Choose a type, and NPCs of that type show up as yellow dots on your mini-map.

You can see the menu to the left, and to the right is a shot of my mini-map after I have chosen ‘Repair’ from the menu. Notice that the magnifying glass icon has changed to an anvil icon to help remind me that I am looking for people who can repair my equipment.

Edits:

Once you’ve completed a quest, the quest-giver shows up on your mini-map again (as they did before), but now they are represented with a yellow “?”.

As the inestimable Gazmik Fizzwidget has pointed out in the comments, all other tracking abilities also show up in the mini-map tracking menu. As soon as little Ione hit level 2 and bought Track Beasts, there it was in the menu! Very convenient. (Although I am going to miss Fizzwidget’s TrackMenu a lot — for one thing, the new Blizzard tracking menu seems like it’s going to be very long and hard to read quickly on a high level hunter with mining, herbalism and the new fish tracking.)

Flight Masters that you haven’t yet met (that is, for flight paths that you do not yet know) show up on the mini-map as a green “!” regardless of whether or not you are tracking Flight Masters. The green “!” disappears as soon as you talk to them and learn the path.

Quest-givers with repeatable quests show up on the mini-map as a blue “?”.

Quest-givers do not appear to show up on the mini-map if the quests they have are all grey to you. However, mousing over them in person does still show a yellow “!”, so that’s something at least.

Here’s an interesting one! Neutral creatures now show up on the mini-map as yellow dots while hostile creatures are red dots. In the shot below, the yellow dots are (neutral) dragonhawks while the red dots are (hostile) springpaws.

Korth, in a comment below, pointed out that friendly creatures show as green and that NPCs and players show up slighly differently. Here’s a screenshot he took that demonstrates that. Korth says: “You can see one hostile NPC (Closest dot to due North), four Friendly NPCs (starting due South and moving toward the West), four Hostile Players and two Friendly Players (just north of me and moving to the north-west).”

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20 thoughts on “PTR 2.3.0: Mini-Map Improvements”

Yeah, I just noticed the same this morning. The great thing is that this menu also lists any tracking spells your character has — Dwarves’ racial Find Treasure, Hunters’ tracking, etc. Guess that’s one less addon for me to have to maintain and support.

‘Flight Masters that you haven’t yet met (that is, for flight paths that you do not yet know) show up on the mini-map as a green “!”’

Finally they’re starting to see the light! Even yesterday I was in Area 52 and had a hard time finding the NPC! I could have sworn I had followed all the outline of the place, but apparently I hadn’t! (Was on my 66 main, btw, farming the +30 INT on weapon enchant, which I got after one or two hours of grinding!)

‘Neutral creatures now show up on the mini-map as yellow dots’
Another change more than welcome! :)

Now, if they would allow for hunter tracking to “stack” with herb/mins, now THAT would be AWESOME!

Not for nothing, but it really looks like Blizzard is going to be holding everyone’s hand through the entire game now.

More quest xp, less xp/level, a new mall-maping system showing you where everything is, etc. I am assuming their goal is to make it easier for people to reach 70 in time that the 70-80 leveling is available. To be honest, I’m kind of pissed because I busted my hump with my Druid to reach 70 and now newbies will get an easier time at it.

Actually after closer look, it’s not so much a different shade of red or green, but rather a grey circle instead of a yellow circle for Players.
Screenshot: http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/5522/minimapws0.png
You can see one hostile NPC (Closest dot to due North), four Friendly NPCs (starting due South and moving toward the West), four Hostile Players and two Friendly Players (just north of me and moving to the north-west)

So…still no way of making the minimap bigger, then? For someone with a widescreen monitor who plays at high resolution, the minimap is just way too small. I need a giant one I can draw on like Guild Wars. :(

I would recommend that you give simpleMinimap a try (latest version at http://files.wowace.com/simpleMinimap/simpleMinimap.zip). It allows you to customize your minimap allot, including scaling it. All settings are very easily available and user friendly through a right-mouse button menu.